Chapter 22: The Shifted Timeline
Yogan's staff stopped spinning.
"Korra," he repeated, the name foreign on his tongue. "I do not know that name. Is that the next Avatar after the airbender boy?"
"Yes," Zuko/Victor said, his mind racing through lifetimes of knowledge he shouldn't have. "But she's not 'next' for me. Where I come from, she lived ten thousand years after Wan."
Yogan's eyes narrowed. "Ten… thousand?"
"You don't know how long you've been here, do you?" Victor asked quietly.
"Time doesn't pass here," Yogan said, his voice tight. "Only waiting. How long has it been since Wan?"
"Nearly ten thousand years," Victor said. "The world has changed. Nations rose and fell. The Fire Nation started a war that lasted a century. The Avatar cycle continued. Roku, Kyoshi, Kuruk, Yangchen, hundreds of Avatars. And Korra was the most recent before I… arrived."
Yogan absorbed this, his expression unreadable. "Ten thousand years," he whispered. "And the prison… it should have held for longer. The guru said Vumala would escape only when the Avatar cycle was reset. A complete rebirth. When was that to happen?"
"In Korra's time," Victor said. "About seventy to eighty years from now in this timeline. There's an event, the Harmonic Convergence. The same one that occurred when Raava and Wan merged permanently. Vaatu, the spirit of chaos, broke free thanks to some idiot named Unalaq. Korra fought him. She won, but…" He hesitated. "She lost her connection to all past Avatars. She reset the cycle. Started it anew with herself as the first."
Yogan stared at him, the pieces locking into place with terrible clarity.
"That was the moment," Yogan said slowly. "That was when the prison was meant to open. When the Avatar was at their most vulnerable, cut off from the wisdom of their past lives. When the world's spiritual balance was reset. That was when Vumala was supposed to make his move. Not now."
He looked at Victor, and for the first time, Victor saw not just urgency, but dread in the ancient Avatar's eyes.
"You changed the timeline," Yogan said. "Your presence here, a soul from outside this world, it thinned the walls between realities. It weakened the prison decades too early. Mun Lao isn't waiting for Korra's era. He's here now. And if he succeeds in finding a mate, if that child is born as Vumala's vessel before the cycle is meant to reset…"
He didn't finish. He didn't need to.
"How do I stop him?" Victor asked.
"You don't," Yogan said bluntly. "Not yet. Not as you are. I fought Mun Lao when I was nineteen. He nearly killed me. It took me decades, decades to master the elements enough to face him again. And even then, it wasn't my bending that defeated him in the end. It was Raava's light, and even that only temporarily."
He stepped closer, his gaze intense.
"There has never been a bender like Mun Lao in all the history I knew. No one has ever mastered a single element to the degree he mastered fire. Not Wan. Not me. Not any Avatar I've seen in the echoes of this prison. In ten thousand years, I doubt anyone has come close. He is not just a firebender. He is fire incarnate. And he has had an eternity to plan his revenge."
Victor's jaw tightened. "Then what do I do?"
"You learn," Yogan said. "You prepare. You find him before he finds the mate. And you pray that you're ready when you do."
The void around them began to waver. The pull of waking tugged at Victor's spirit.
But before he let go, he asked one more thing, a question that had burned in the back of his mind since the Siege of the North, since he saw Lu Ten bend a flame that was not a flame.
"What about black fire?" Victor asked.
Yogan went still. "What?"
"Black flames," Victor said. "Not normal fire. Not blue. Black. So dark it eats the light. Fire that doesn't burn, it consumes. Fire that can steal another firebender's bending, if only for a moment. What do you know about that?"
Yogan's staff clattered to the unseen ground.
His face, for the first time since Victor had met him, showed pure, unguarded shock.